A/N: AAAAAAAAAAAAaand we're back! Took a small break. Back now. Throw some damn stones and leave a review. Check out Patr*on for more.
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The Sol Divisive appeared suddenly, jolting to life, their petrified chassis's croaked and stuttered as they broke into action.
Void immediately drove into the enemy lines, unholstering his rifle and firing a barrage of bullets into the Minotaurs' core that had crushed Gandalf.
A platoon of Hob-Goblins responded immediately, snapping into a firing line, amber plasma condensed on the seams of their blasters, ionising the very air, hundreds of lasers shot towards Void.
[Time's Tempo]
The world stopped.
He saw the bullets spilling out of the barrel of his rifle, each spinning wildly, frozen in the air. His eyes darted left, and a minotaur charged its arm cannon. To the right, a squad of harpies channelled their radiant beams that fizzled at the edges of their mechanical irises.
Void took in a breath, his body hung in the air, one foot off the ground, the other already mid-stride.
He faced a hail of plasma that tore through the air, inching ever so slowly towards him.
Void's light flared, lightning coursed through his veins, pushing him beyond the limits of his own perception.
He moved.
But unlike every other time, the world didn't.
For the first time, as lightning wreathed his form, Void strode through a frozen world, shifting carefully with only a few meagre steps, till he'd reached his limit, and the gears of the world kicked back into place.
The Hobgoblins fired, plasma singed the air, but struck empty ground.
Void exhaled, inches from where he'd been. He coiled, gathering his momentum. Void bolted to the Goblins, but they immediately reacted to his speed.
Plasma cleaved the air, Void sheathed his lightning, coating himself in shadows as he flickered into nothing.
The Vex couldn't hit what they could not see.
Void darted from tree to tree, in a frenzy, before anyone could understand what was going on, he was already above them.
His hands drew an arc. Void reeled in one of his fists, and light packed itself on the knuckles of the other.
[Shadowshot: Cataclysm]
A violet arrow streaked and struck the Vex, pulling in everything present to a single, compressed nebula that sprouted binding chains which restrained their chassis, followed by an eruption.
The players stood still.
To them, that one moment was but a small cut-scene. A display of Void's powers. One that had left them in awe. His movements were too smooth. His attacks too fierce.
But the most important thing was apparent.
"How the hell did he do that?" Undecided's eyes were wide open.
"It like...everything else, was paused." Gandalf snorted in disbelief.
TheOneWhoKnocks cursed under his breath, "That shit is too op. Did he just stop time? Did he do that?"
"Bro's out here moving like quicksilver and thought we wouldn't notice." BearSpray clicked his tongue and continued commenting for his recording. "Goddamn developers out here with no creativity. You see this shit guys? This is why you hire better writers."
"Shut the f*ck up." IEatPaint
"Yeah, shut the f*ck up, and focus on the Raid." Waffles groaned.
"OK, press skip!" BearSpray chided, waiting on the confirmation screen as the cut-scene had just ended, but the players were still trapped in its menu.
"I PRESSED SKIP!" Waffles groaned.
BearSpray wiped his face in disbelief "OK, THEN STOP SHOUTING! CLEARLY, I am not talking to YOU!"
"WHO DIDN'T SKIP!" Waffles immediately turned her attention to the remaining four.
"RELAX. I forgot to SKIP!" Gandalf immediately spammed the skip option.
"ARE YOU SPECIAL?"
"I said CALM DOWN, it was a MISINPUT."
TheOneWhoKnocks sighed, but as the world around them regained its colour, the fight instantly resumed.
"Oh SHIT! LOCK IN!" He instantly equipped his sniper rifle, trying to hit the sweet spot on the Vex Minotaurs chained by the Shadowshot
The rest of the players scattered into cover. Gandalf and BearSpray drew away the Harpies fluttering above by firing shots. IEatPaint stayed in the centre, dropping down a quick barrier, he jumped in and out of cover to take down the Vex.
Waffles was already in the air. Seeing this many enemies grouped meant that her neurons were already at max capacity.
She triggered her Nova Bomb and dropped it right atop their head.
As the dust settled and the Sol Divisive were in tatters, another group of Minotaurs warped in.
"Left Minotaur!" Undecided called out, firing his Golden Gun. BearSpray followed his callout, using his own Golden Gun. The two aimed at the Minotaur's core. A few shots later, the machine was already hollowed out and on the floor.
"Right! It's a Wyern!" BearSpray pivoted, firing his remaining shots. The bullets connected, but not before the Wyern shrieked and leapt into the air, falling towards Gandalf and BearSpray.
A moment's hesitation meant that they would wipe here.
But IEatPaint never hesitated.
Before Void even reached for his sword, the titan shot into the air with a Thundercrash, aiming towards the Wyern.
As an unstoppable force and an immovable object collided, their forces clashed directly. IEatPaint's Thundercrash tore through the Wyvern's health. And though he couldn't stop its crash, he had done his job.
Another Golden Gun rang out.
TheOneWhoKnocks took the final shot, just before the Wyern's damage connected. His bullets struck it directly in the core.
A fluorescent wisp of light cracked open from the Wyern, and the machine shrieked again, only to blow itself apart before collision.
Smoke scattered everywhere, but as the chaos dissipated, only rubble and scraps remained.
"LET'S GOOO!" Gandalf cheered.
The players broke into a laugh as the enemies seemed to stop respawning.
"It's not over yet. We need to move fast." Void interrupted and pointed towards the ascent.
The players saw that their objective hadn't updated. Without missing a beat, they all broke into a sprint and ran through the gap, pushing up the trail.
The trail steepened.
The players pushed through what looked like the final stretch with everything they had left, which wasn't much.
Their light bars were thin, special ammo was low, and health was barely regenerating.
As the trail levelled ahead, the jungle fell away below them, and the violet expanse of the Garden opened up beneath the islands.
The sourceless violet light pressed closer here at the crown than it had anywhere on the ascent.
They stood at the clearing's edge.
Nobody moved.
The stone ahead was bare and smooth, worn flat, geometric patterns etched across its face in the Garden's oldest architecture. The jungle held at every edge of the clearing, stopped short as if it was at an invisible line it had no intention of crossing.
At the centre of it all was an altar.
It had not been built.
There was no masonry, no joinery, no evidence of hands. The stone formations that formed its base had risen from the clearing's floor over centuries, slow and unhurried.
Its pieces had fused into each other at the joints the way coral fuses, organically, each piece finding the next as though pulled by a logic that had no blueprint. The result was a platform of dark stone without a single crevice or edge.
Above the altar was a membrane.
It hung in the air, without contact, without support, suspended there by the Garden's own authority. Its skin was dark and ichorous, translucent enough to catch the light but not reflect it.
Yet at the same time, it didn't possess the depth of a hollow object but of something far denser.
Deep violet bled outward from it in long, radiant waves, each one travelling the full width of the altar before rising into the air.
The lights came in a rhythm that had no urgency, each wave complete before the next began. The violet threaded upward through the Garden's sky and bled across the horizon in all directions.
The players said nothing.
BearSpray had his weapon lowered without realising it. Undecided stood with both hands at his sides. Even Waffles, who had a comment for everything, looked at the altar in complete silence, her head tilted slightly.
It was, without any other word available for it, beautiful.
The kind of beauty that asked nothing of the observer, made no argument and offered no invitation. It simply existed, complete and indifferent.
Then Void's eyes flickered. He saw a sickly green flame.
A single strand of it, buried within the violet so finely that it would have been invisible to anyone who hadn't known to look for it. It shimmered there beneath the surface of the membrane's light, moving at its own rhythm, independent of the slow breathing waves around it. Faint. Patient. Entirely self-possessed.
His jaw tightened, he walked a step forward, looked over his shoulder, and began to brief the players.
"What you see before you is the Black Heart."
His words caught their attention.
He let the name sit for a moment before continuing.
"The Heart was made by the darkness, an unknown enemy that has continued to haunt us since ancient times. But this is by far its ace." He turned back to the heart.
"This creation of darkness absorbs light, and forever seals it away. The reason every upcoming generation of guardians is weaker is that the heart has continued to sap away the Traveller's light."
"If we don't stop it now, it will keep feeding until it doesn't need to anymore." Void stopped there.
The players saw their HUDs blink.
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Checkpoint Reached
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Relief washed over them.
Waffles exhaled. "Looks like this is the big battle."
"That's not good, though." Gandalf shook his head, "I mean, if they gave us a checkpoint, doesn't it mean that it's super hard?"
"Can't know till we try it though." IEatPaint nodded.
"Agreed. Let's just see what the encounter is." BearSpray reloaded his gun and walked forward.
The air near the membrane shifted, with a sudden inward draw; the atmosphere around the Heart compressed into one total movement, and the violet light bleeding from the stone patterns beneath their feet drew down in a steady, accelerating pull. The light didn't flicker. It simply began to leave.
"Dumbass! Don't just trigger the start!" Waffles facepalmed.
The membrane split along its surface in thin fissures, opening with a slow, deliberate patience. Three smaller rifts tore open in the air nearby, their edges bleeding green.
The Heart took in a breath.
Its ichorous skin contracted and expanded in one long movement, deep and full, and the green inside ignited. Viridian flames rose from the fissures in slow curling plumes.
The players watched their light bars drop a notch. Then another. Eventually, a portion of their light bar simply greyed out.
"What's happening?" IEatPaint asked, already retreating.
"It's taking our light. Directly. Didn't Viper just say that it absorbs light?" Undecided spoke up.
The rifts tore wider, and from within it stepped out three figures, drenched in the Heart's viridian flames.